In the preparation of molded fiberglass pipe and other parts it is conventional to collect the glass fibers as bats which have a binder on their surface and to cure the binder to maintain the bats as coherent masses. These glass bats are then molded under heat and pressure in contact with organic resins. The molding process cures the resins and retains the fiberglass bats in their molded form.
There has been a considerable interest in proposed processes for producing pipe and molded parts without the necessity of application of heat and pressure. These processes involve melting glass batch and forming fibers from the melted glass. The fibers are collected in the form of bats, the bats are contacted with a rapidly curing chemical system and the corresponding curing agent and simultaneously molded under pressure but at room temperature. These procedures have now been advanced to the extent of allowing their application to manufacturing, in a few simple steps, items which were previously manufactured in a series of complex steps. These procedures allow their application to mixtures of particulate materials rather than a single material to produce products superior in strength to those employing the single material.